when will the 6 tuner hopper come out? I hope "SOON" for real.

[John Kotches]

I just responded in the other thread http://www.satelliteguys.us/private.php?do=newpm&u=161374&postid=2999958 why I don't think they are storing a single stream for the whole transponder.

They can't store 8 days of full transponder anymore. They could store current day as the whole transponder and break it down. Don't know that that's the case, nor what type of CPU power it takes to do this. I'm sure this is one of several reasons Hopper has a "higher-end" CPU than Joey.

Even with a 6 tuner box you'd only be serving about 100mbps combined read/write requests for 10-12 "clients." I was putting single disk servers into production doing more work than that 10 years ago with less capable hardware.

It's still not the bandwidth, the inherent latency of rotating rusted iron when you have to move the heads constantly to drop your data for the correct streams. Seeks + Rotational Latency and the limits of either a 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM spindle. Double from 3 to 6 and increase the read only makes it worse. I don't recall that Hopper has tons of memory on board for FS buffer, which could help.

No, that functionality is already built-in to the Hopper. The current switch technology sends all the even or all the odd transponders for a sat to a tuner, even though the tuner really only needs a single transponder at a time. There is not enough bandwidth in the cable to stack six tuners that way. They would need to have switching smart enough to skinny it down to a single transponder per tuner, again much like D*'s SWM tech.

I knew I didn't know that, good information.

 

[JM42]

They can't store 8 days of full transponder anymore. They could store current day as the whole transponder and break it down. Don't know that that's the case, nor what type of CPU power it takes to do this. I'm sure this is one of several reasons Hopper has a "higher-end" CPU than Joey.

Sorry, I flubbed the link. Went back and fixed it. (http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/294056-PTAT-question?p=2999958#post2999958).

As stated, there are several reasons other than the space required why I think hey are not saving off a single stream for the transponder.

It's still not the bandwidth, the inherent latency of rotating rusted iron when you have to move the heads constantly to drop your data for the correct streams. Seeks + Rotational Latency and the limits of either a 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM spindle. Double from 3 to 6 and increase the read only makes it worse. I don't recall that Hopper has tons of memory on board for FS buffer, which could help.

And it's still less more work (and a lot less randomness) than a moderately busy PC server does. Yes you will hit the ceiling eventually, but my gut tells me there is still plenty of headroom. D* is OK with 5 tuners, will a 6th be too much? I doubt it. If so, then cap it at 5.

But... I actually like the two hopper approach better for redundancy. Only Dish knows if it makes economical sense for a box with more tuners.

 

[John Kotches]

JM:

The problem with your analogy is that a PC server has much more memory to cache with than hopper does. These days PC servers measure in the 10s of GB which helps quite a bit when you can cache and optimize writes to the file system.

This is one drive doing everything with little cache space available. I doubt there's even 1GB of physical memory in Hopper.

 

[JM42]

JM:

The problem with your analogy is that a PC server has much more memory to cache with than hopper does. These days PC servers measure in the 10s of GB which helps quite a bit when you can cache and optimize writes to the file system.

This is one drive doing everything with little cache space available. I doubt there's even 1GB of physical memory in Hopper.

I wasn't thinking of multi GB servers. Give me one of my "cheap" racked units I was deploying 10 years ago - 256-512MB RAM, 5400 RPM drives. They could have handled 10 6mbps streams (maybe not the Windows boxes).

Again, D*'s HR34 manages 5 tuners with essentially the same hardware(I think it may actually be a slower clock), and RVU is probably more CPU intensive at the server than Joeys are. I can't believe the design is so close to the edge it couldn't be pushed a little further.

Any follow up Hopper could use a newer chipset, and there is nothing preventing them from bumping the memory up if extra cache was needed. It's not like they have to take the existing Hopper, cram in the extra tuners and be prevented from making any other tweaks.

 

[dare2be]

All these technical limitation discussions are moot when the real driving force behind whether a 6-tuner model will ever see the light of day is economics.

 

[elmafu69]

I have been thinking of a second hopper too. I have been having timer issues that are plain dumb. Say if I have a recording of the same channel lets say channel 112 that run one after the other. Once the first show is done, the hopper records 3 more minutes of the first show since the hours are always messed up. Then the hopper records the second show which starts one minute early. You would figure that this can be done using just one tuner but the hopper used two tuners in order to do this. So from 10:29 pm till 10:33 i have two timers taken up. Sadly at that time I also record something on another channel so I have 0 tuners available when I should have at least one.

 

[3HaloODST]

I have been thinking of a second hopper too. I have been having timer issues that are plain dumb. Say if I have a recording of the same channel lets say channel 112 that run one after the other. Once the first show is done, the hopper records 3 more minutes of the first show since the hours are always messed up. Then the hopper records the second show which starts one minute early. You would figure that this can be done using just one tuner but the hopper used two tuners in order to do this. So from 10:29 pm till 10:33 i have two timers taken up. Sadly at that time I also record something on another channel so I have 0 tuners available when I should have at least one.

Agree with the complaints about the padding on the same channel. Another gripe of mine is if you are watching a channel and it's set to record something on the same channel instead of "hopping" on to the tuner/channel you're watching it uses another tuner. Would be nice if they could change those behaviors. The good news is that getting more Hoppers alleviates the issue.

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[Miner]

Anywho. Sounds like a 2nd generation Hopper is far off in the future. I wish there was a way to have a 4th, or 5th tuner. My wife likes to record stuff on channels like TNT/TBS/FX/etc, and often there are 2 shows recording at once. With PTAT taking the 3rd tuner, I just feel as if I need 1 or 2 more tuners so I can watch what I want. With a 1 year old daughter, she won't come into play for another year or 2, but once she wants to watch her cartoons, I might as well go into the garage and work on the car. Or get 2 Hoppers.

Miner

 

[eddwall]

Get two Hoppers !!

Sounds like the best thing to do.

 

[mpeltz]

Question. How are the two hoppers installed and integrated into your setup. Do you need an additional coax? Does each hopper need it's own separate hdmi hookup into the A/V receiver or TV? Does it require you switching the A/V receiver between hopper1 and hopper2 or are the hoppers integrated with each other?

 

[satjay]

Question. How are the two hoppers installed and integrated into your setup. Do you need an additional coax? Does each hopper need it's own separate hdmi hookup into the A/V receiver or TV? Does it require you switching the A/V receiver between hopper1 and hopper2 or are the hoppers integrated with each other?

In regards to intergration the hoppers can view recordings with drop down menus on each Hopper

I will let someone else talk about the technical stuff

 

[lucky86]

Question. How are the two hoppers installed and integrated into your setup. Do you need an additional coax? Does each hopper need it's own separate hdmi hookup into the A/V receiver or TV? Does it require you switching the A/V receiver between hopper1 and hopper2 or are the hoppers integrated with each other?

The hoppers connect to a dual node that has one coax line for each hopper. I have two hoppers connected to the same tv and I only usually have the HDMI connected to one of them and I used the shared DVR function to access the recordings from the hopper that isn't connected to an HDMI cable. If you have both hoppers connected to separate TVs then of course you would need an av connection from each hopper to each TV. If you want them both hooked up independently to the same tv,then you would need an HDMI cable from each to the TV and you would need to change the input in order to gain full access to each receiver. So it all depends on what you wanting.

 

[Scherrman]

For those of you wanting a a 6 tuner receiver from Dish you would best wait until Team Summit next May. I doubt you will hear any info about any new receiver until then unless possibly CES in January. That's only if they are even in the works of making a new one, but it would be nice since I don't know what else they can offer to make everyone excited after this last year. Charlie said he'd like to be showing off a new Dish phone at the next Summit but that's not looking good at the moment.

 

[mpeltz]

The hoppers connect to a dual node that has one coax line for each hopper. I have two hoppers connected to the same tv and I only usually have the HDMI connected to one of them and I used the shared DVR function to access the recordings from the hopper that isn't connected to an HDMI cable. If you have both hoppers connected to separate TVs then of course you would need an av connection from each hopper to each TV. If you want them both hooked up independently to the same tv,then you would need an HDMI cable from each to the TV and you would need to change the input in order to gain full access to each receiver. So it all depends on what you wanting.

I know it's been a while, but thanks for the reply. I just ordered an upgrade from a 722k to a dual hopper setup. The first hopper was free, but second one was $50 plus I ordered the OTA module. Install is on Dec 30. I was on the fence about upgrading especially will the newly announced price increases. I think the hopper features are now compelling enough to switch.

 

[mpeltz]

So...I get the order email and they have down for one hopper and one Joey, not two hoppers. I call in and they tell me I can't get two hoppers.

 

[3HaloODST]

So...I get the order email and they have down for one hopper and one Joey, not two hoppers. I call in and they tell me I can't get two hoppers.

Get 2H/2J then when the installer arrives tell him to take back the unwanted Joey.

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[ScottChez]

Fir the Seven Tuner option that is out now see this post.
It has 3 virtual tuners
http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/300228-How-to-upgrade-your-Hopper-to-7-Tuners-for-30

 

[mpeltz]

Get 2H/2J then when the installer arrives tell him to take back the unwanted Joey.

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Great idea! Tho, I think I'm just going to wait at this point. Perhaps Dish may consider a 6 tuner hopper in the future OR I may even consider Direct TV. Another option is to downgrade my programming due to the price increases and go with some streaming options.